Assad, Janáček and Smetana
January 12-13, 2024
In this program specially curated by SPCO violinist Daria Adams, two autobiographical works by Czech composers Leoš Janáček and Bedřich Smetana look back to their …
Sandbox Residency
A mold-breaking model for new music
The SPCO Sandbox is a new kind of composer residency program which aims to build a community of curiosity, exploration and collaboration around new music by inviting composers to develop new works in a collaborative process with the orchestra over the course of a season. The idea of placing a composer at the creative center of an orchestra is not new. Indeed, it is this very arrangement that proved such fertile creative ground for composer Franz Joseph Haydn, who famously said of his time embedded with the Esterházy court orchestra that:
As head of an orchestra, I could try things out, observe what creates a good effect and what weakens it, and thus revise, make additions or cuts, take risks. I was cut off from the world, nobody in my vicinity could upset my self-confidence … I had no choice but to become original.
Clarice Assad is our featured Sandbox composer-in-residence in the 2023.24 season.This fall, Assad will workshop her new work for voice and orchestra before its premiere January 12–13, 2024. Future Sandbox composers-in-residence Valerie Coleman and Gabriela Lena Frank will begin developing their new Sandbox works for the
2024.25 season.
Upcoming events
SPCO Sandbox Composer Residencies are made possible with generous project support from:
Amphion Foundation
The Aaron Copland Fund for Music
Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University
David and Karen Olson Family Foundation
Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting
Nara Fund
New Music USA